If the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, is
offering advice on what President Muhammadu Buhari must do to rescue his
government, then the President should know he has work to do. The governor, who
came to office over six years ago on the ticket of the All Progressives Grand
Alliance, has since switched parties. He is currently the official clown of the
All Progressives Congress. And with months of unpaid salaries and pensions, and
state monuments bearing his family name, there’s enough wreckage to show for his
status.
But that’s a digression. His
advice to Buhari is on point and infinitely more sensible than the nonsense of
his Kogi State counterpart, Yahaya Bello, who declared a public holiday to mark
the President’s return but didn’t know what to do to save even one of the 60
persons that died from abdominal infection in Kogi the same week.
Buhari has work to do and he
has to start from home while the rodents in his office are being apprehended
and the cobwebs cleared.
His six minutes national
address was a mixed bag. But whatever its defects, he has made enough speeches
in the last two years. It’s time to do what he has been saying.
As far as I can remember,
Buhari is the first to win a presidential election depending almost entirely on
votes from the North and the South West. What he should have done on assumption
of office, was to rally the whole country and not give the regrettable
impression that he would only be President for the regions that voted for him.
That posture, compounded by a
few skewed appointments in his early days, has fuelled separatist sentiments,
especially in the South East, and popularised Nnamdi Kanu’s Biafra rhetoric.
Renaming Buhari “Okechukwu”
(a share from God) or even “Onyenzoputa” (saviour) will not solve the problem
created by his initial faux pas. The government has to start an honest
engagement with its citizens, especially groups that have been radicalised by
official insensitivity.
The 2014 National Conference
report and even reports from previous ones, which Buhari has inexplicably
refused to read, would be a good starting point.
As I said in this column last
week, Boko Haram appears resurgent and insecurity is assuming new, frightening
dimensions. It would be naïve to assume that Boko Haram would be wiped out. The
recent deadly attacks by the group suggest that there’s still work to be done.
Buhari cannot afford to take
his eyes off the insurgents; nor should the even more difficult task of
resettling the victims be ignored anymore.
It’s heartening to know that
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had not submitted his committee’s report on the
$43 million found at a Lagos residence before the rodents invaded Buhari’s
corner.
The Vice President’s
committee was supposed to find out how tons of dollars ended up in a private
residence and if it was true as the former Director General of the National
Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke, claimed, that he sheltered the money on orders.
That report should be made
public, along with the findings of Osinbajo’s committee on the role of the
former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, in the
alleged case of millions of naira set aside for the Presidential Initiative on
the North East, which ended up in private pockets.
The war on corruption appears
stuck in the mud. But since the President was getting regular briefings in his
London sickbay, he’s probably already aware of two court rulings asking his
government to publish looted funds recovered since 1999 to date; looted funds
recovered on his watch since 2015 and the names of the looters.
Corruption will kill the
country if all we do is talk about it or turn a blind eye when the culprits are
close to us. Some people close to the President are giving his government a bad
name and he knows them.
If the National Assembly is
still perceived as a den of corruption, it’s because Buhari has failed to use
his leverage as leader of the ruling party to deal with it; and if the
judiciary is making mincemeat of anti-corruption cases, it’s because Buhari has
retained a minister of justice who is confused, if not incompetent.
If he seriously wants a
change, he’ll have to make the right call. And time is not on his side. There’s
merit in Okorocha’s advice that he might need to overhaul his cabinet.
Not only does he need to take
another look at the Justice Ministry, he might also need to overcome the
sentiment that to love a competent minister is to kill him with work: Babatunde
Fashola is currently overworked with three ministries. He needs to be where the
country can optimise his talent and energy.
In theory, the Ministry of
Education should be able to handle the national strike by university teachers,
which is in its second week. In practice, however, Buhari cannot afford to
outsource the problem, which has lingered on now for eight years.
I recall that when The Interview interviewed
Buhari in July 2016, he said one of the reasons why he dumped the National
Conference report was that Goodluck Jonathan’s government used the money that
ought to have been used to pay lecturers to host “a useless conference.” Now,
he’ll find that the matter is a bit more complicated.
Money won’t bury all the
problems in the universities, though. Sure, the universities require more
resources, but even if we hand over the key to the treasury to them, nothing
will change as long as the market continues to think that university graduates
are useless and that a good number of lecturers themselves need teachers.
What is required is a
comprehensive overhaul of the educational system – the kind that Oby Ezekwesili
tried to implement as Education Minister before vested interests fought her to
a standstill. Fixing education is a presidential assignment.
It’s good to know that, so
far, there are no reports of well-wishers falling over themselves to visit
Buhari at home since he returned. They can send him cards with a spray can or
two of pesticides for his office use, if they can afford it.
The man has work to do and
should be left alone to face it, squarely.
Source: thecable.ng
Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine and
board member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network
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